Rival Robot Styles Compete

The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) will announce on July 11 the winners of the first phase of its Robotic Challenge, where several teams (seven DARPA funded and seven independently funded) are currently competing with their unique search and rescue robot designs. The winners will compete against six teams just awarded a free Atlas robot in DARPA's Virtual Robotics Challenge (VRC).

The six winners in the VRC were awarded an Atlas robot by Boston Dynamics, to which they will upload their algorithms for the next-phase DRC competition where they will compete with the winners of the unique rescue robots. The first slide below is Atlas by Boston Dynamics, against which the other seven designs will compete (photos were only available of the seven DARPA funded teams' robots).

DARPA-funded robots of all different styles will join the Robotic Challenge fray for the real-world phase. Now that the Virtual Robotics Challenge (VRC) has taken place, those winners of each use the DARPA supplied Atlas robot (pictured). (Source: DARPA)

I'm all for personal robots--I have a lot of jobs I would like to off-load to them--but so far I have been disppointed in even the most specialized home robots. I'm beginning to think robotics needs a "killer app" to break open the home market.